Continuities and Discontinuities Patterns of Migration, Adolescent

The family, which comprises a nuclear or extended group in different cultures,
is the main social institution through which individuals move from childhood
to adolescence and then into adulthood. As an individual enters and passes
through adolescence, his or her sense of social and self-identity shifts (Chodorow,
1989; Gilligan, 1982; Hoare, 1991; Ulman and Tartar, 2001) and renegotiations
of family relationships and role expectations take place (Carter and McGoldrick,
1999). Adolescent development, however, takes on new meanings when
combined with experiences of migration. Migration during an individual’s
adolescence can have multiple effects as altered landscapes require family
members to confront new cultural, economic and social challenges. All told,
migration intensifies and complicates how adolescents come to see themselves
and how they relate to others in and outside the family unit (Mahoney, 2002).

Although social scientists recognize that age is a significant factor in

shaping how migration is experienced, few studies have specifically addressed
the dynamic intersection of immigration and adolescence. This article seeks to
reduce this gap by discussing results from a qualitative study I conducted of
immigrant adolescent girls from 35 nations (Michael, 1998). I start by defining
migration and adolescence respectively, and detailing both the contributions and
limitations of extant literatures on these topics. I then proceed to draw on my
study results to examine varying patterns of migration, their effects on adolescent
girls’ post-migration family experiences and relationships, and the implications
of these observations for social work practice and research.

STUDYING IMMIGRATION AND ADOLESCENCE TOGETHER:
A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Migration

Today, over 190m individuals around the world live outside their nations of
birth (International Organization of Migration [IOM], 2007). The decision to
migrate may be stimulated by armed conflicts or by issues related to ethnicity,
religion, political beliefs and/or gender. In some cases, migration is spurred by
interests in accessing education and/or improving economic well-being, by
desires to join other family members living abroad or by hopes of adventure.
While individuals may move from their birth nation for periods of time to
pursue education, employment or recreational travel, individuals who enter
another country with the intention to permanently settle are usually referred
to as ‘immigrants’.

But migration is not only the result of a decision-making process. It also

reflects differences in opportunities that vary themselves according to age,
gender, educational level, employment history, emigration policies of ‘sending’
nations and immigration/visa policies of receiving nations.

Indeed, although many adolescent immigrants derive their legal status

from family reunification visas, some families and adolescents may be ineligible

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for these visas and/or find that immigration applications take too long. These
adolescents may arrive on student or tourist visas and then overstay their
authorized stay (becoming ‘undocumented’ or illegal immigrants). Obviously,
migration also requires a range of resources to fund a journey as well as infor-
mational networks to facilitate access to housing and jobs after arrival. Thus,
the presence or absence of opportunities and resources is at least as important
to the character of migration experiences as the decision-making process (itself
often influenced by perceptions of opportunities).

Migration is a process and can be envisioned as a continuum of stages

through which an individual and/or family progresses: pre-migration, departure
and transition, migration and settlement (Drachman et al., 1996; Sluzki, 1979).
Most studies of family migration mention one or more of these stages. Less
commonly studied in close detail, though, are patterns of migration that occur
amidst these stages: who came first and with whom? Did the family come as a
unit or did the mother come first? Were there short or prolonged separations?
The major exception to this observed gap in the literature on migrating families
is recent scholarship centered on transnational parenting (Best-Cummings and
Gildner, 2004; Suarez-Orozco and Suarez, 2001). These studies focus on the
experiences of migrating mothers and the children who they leave behind to
be ‘fostered’ by relatives in the home nation before mother and child are reunited
in the new country (Dreby, 2006; Orellana et al., 2001; Thompson and Bauer,
2000; Thorne et al., 1999).

Adolescence

But what is adolescence itself? Adolescence can be broadly defined as both a
process and the period when childhood comes to a close and life as an adult
begins. Adolescence occurs on a continuum between youth and maturity; it is
a time of endings and beginnings, losses and gains, when developmental influ-
ences related to biology, personality, socio-economic and cultural factors all
combine. During this crucial period, both parents and adolescents need to find
a balance between connection and individuation, interdependence and indepen-
dence (Liddle and Schwartz, 2002). Not surprisingly, these general challenges of
adolescence are compounded by the particular experiences of immigrant
families. Not only must such families negotiate changes in their physical, social
and economic environment but they may be forced to develop new values and
practices, and to find new sources and systems of support.

While adolescent immigration has been studied, extant research has been

limited in at least three respects. First, many study samples combine US born
teenage children of immigrants, current adolescents who migrated in their
pre-teen years and individuals who migrated as adolescents (Reardon-Anderson
et al., 2002; Ullman and Tartar, 2001; White and Glick, 2000). However, the
aggregation of these very different cohorts fails to recognize significant differ-
ence in life experiences and the impact of varying developmental capacities.

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While Rumbaut (1997) tried to correct for this issue – using a quantitative
classification so that those who migrated pre-school are labeled ‘1.75’ migrants
and those who migrated after age 12 are labeled ‘1.25’ migrants – generally
speaking, little research attention has been paid to how a child’s or adolescent’s
age impacts the experience of immigrant families. This shortcoming affects the
ability of social work practitioners and researchers to adequately understand the
unique challenges faced by adolescent immigrants and their families, and there-
fore their social service needs.

Second, extant research on adolescence and immigration has focused

primarily on ‘post’ immigration experiences rather than emphasizing con-
tinuities as well as discontinuities between young people’s previous and present
lives. In other words, the importance of conceiving migration as taking place
along a continuum has often been overlooked. Further, studies of adolescent
immigrants often focus only on post-migration ‘adjustment’ using self-esteem,
stressor and/or symptom checklists that include: English language proficiency;
school grades and rates of completion; teen pregnancy; parent/child conflicts;
substance abuse; and/or gang involvement (e.g. Florshein, 1997; Ullman and
Tartar, 2001). While these studies have been valuable in identifying at-risk popu-
lations and assisting with educational and social service interventions, they have
also been problematic in fragmenting scholarly understanding of how immi-
grant teens’ pre- and post- migration experiences are interconnected, and how
the adolescent herself interprets the migration experience.

A third gap in the extant literature is that little research has explored in

detail the relationship between adolescence, migration and gender. Yet gender
is a critical dimension in the evolution of adolescents’ roles and identities, often
permeating family expectations and relationships. This is not to say that
research has been entirely lacking in this area: the effects of gender have been
studied with regard to immigrants’ decision-making processes, post-migration
employment opportunities and shifting family relationships (Dion and Dion,
2004; Ehrenreich and Hochschild, 2002; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1997, 1999;
Parrenas, 2001a; Pessar and Mahler, 2003). But, while a vibrant feminization of
migration literature has emerged, there is still surprisingly little published
research that investigates experiences of adolescent immigrant girls and their
families in depth (Mahoney, 2002).

A CASE STUDY: THE EFFECT OF MIGRATION ON
ADOLESCENT GIRLS IN NEW YORK CITY

In order to study how migration and adolescence relate, and to focus in more
depth on gender than have prior studies, I interviewed 64 girls who migrated
during adolescence from 35 different nations. The decision to include girls from
multiple nations took advantage of the ethnic diversity of New York City but

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was also guided by my hope of moving beyond ethnic-national specific research
to find cross-national commonalities (see Gibson, 1988; Levitt, 2001; Parrenas,
2001b). The central theme of the interviews was the girls’ experiences before
and after immigrating to the USA. Under this aegis, a wide range of topics
relevant to adolescent girls was explored including their expectations, school
and friendship experiences, goals and dreams, and their lives within families as
daughters and/or sisters.

Denzin’s (1989: 66) ‘progressive-regressive’ method was used with immi-

gration as the pivotal event from which to examine pre- and post-migration
experiences. Girls were asked to talk broadly about their pre-migration and
post-migration lives so that patterns within their interpretations could be
discerned. Theoretically, then, the study’s design was inspired by feminist narra-
tive traditions (Personal Narratives Group, 1989) and by the writings of social
constructionists about how people create their own fluid meanings out of their
lived experiences (Berger and Luckmann, 1966; Furman et al., 2003). In order
to develop open-ended stimulus questions for use in a ‘flexible strategy of
discovery’” (Lofland cited in Mishler, 1986: 28),‘sensitizing concepts’ (Charmaz,
2003) based on the literature of adolescence were employed. I also drew on my
own background working with immigrant families in an urban mental health
clinic. The interviews were therefore structured but not rigidly confined to
pre-set questions.

Sample Design and Methodology

To facilitate recruitment of girls from a variety of nations and different socio-
economic backgrounds, I focused on public high schools in New York City in
the boroughs of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx (where immi-
grant populations are the largest and most diverse). Specific neighborhood high
schools were then selected on the basis of percentage of foreign-born students.
Each of the final group of eight schools had at least 25 percent foreign born
students and some had more than 60 percent.

The girls in the study were recruited by a variety of methods: infor-

mational flyers; classroom presentations, and referrals by teachers from bilingual
or English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, guidance counselors or other
students. Ninety-two girls were initially identified. I then met with each girl to
find out if she met the study’s inclusion criteria. These were that the girl had
(1) migrated after her 12th birthday; (2) already resided for one year in the
USA; (3) attained sufficient proficiency in English to be interviewed without
an interpreter; and (4) came from a nation with significant immigration to the
New York Metropolitan area. Of the original 92 girls, 64 met the study’s sample
parameters, kept their interview appointments with me, and returned signed
parental consent forms that had been translated into Arabic, Haitian Creole,
Korean, Russian and Spanish. The consent form was my agreement that each

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girl’s identity would be disguised in any publications pursuant to the interviews.
Accordingly, the names used have been changed. All told, interviews lasted from
45 minutes to 2 hours and were conducted in English at each girl’s respective
school. Most were single session interviews but, due to some of the girls’ school
schedules or after-school activities, discussions were sometimes held on two
occasions. The majority of interviews were recorded and transcribed. When a
girl did not want to be taped, or asked for the tape to be turned off, notes were
taken including quotations. Subsequently these notes were reviewed and filled
out to reflect the interviewees’ comments and observations. In addition, I wrote
field notes about the experience of interviewing, as well as my observations
and reflections about the girl, her school and neighborhood.

The final purposive sample (Dudley, 2005: 155) reflected maximum

variation of national origins to move beyond nation-specific experiences.
Conversely, the resultant sample size did not allow for country specific findings.
Thirty-five nations were represented including China, Korea, the Philippines,
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Egypt, the West Bank, Poland, former Soviet Union,
Yugoslavia, Jamaica, Barbados, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Columbia, and
Brazil. Across these varied nationalities, the girls’ median age at time of arrival
in the USA was 15 (though the ages ranged from 12–18). The girls had lived
in the USA for 11 months to 6 years (median residence was 3 years). At the
time of their interviews, the girls’ ages ranged from 13 to 21 years with a median
age of 17.5. In terms of schooling, at the time of the interviews, 52 percent
of the girls were in 12th grade, 27 percent were in 11th grade and 21 percent
were in 10th grade. Their median GPA was 85 (though this figure ranged from
59 to 94).

Information was collected about the girls’ educational backgrounds and

socio-economic situations; the girls’ parents’ highest level of education was used
as a partial surrogate for economic status. Three of their mothers and one father
had no formal education. About 25 (20%) of the mothers and fathers had
primary school educations, and another 25 (20%) had graduated high school.
Twenty mothers had attended college and 10 had graduated. Four fathers had
some college background and 13 were college graduates. Two mothers and
eight fathers had graduate degrees. In part reflecting migration and parental
separations, the girls could not provide information about 12 (19%) mothers
and 16 (25%) fathers.

Questions related to immigration status are predictably sensitive and

potentially anxiety provoking. While I was initially hesitant about intruding into
this area, most of the girls spontaneously shared information about their legal
or illegal statuses. Of the 53 girls who revealed their immigration statuses, 37
(70%) were documented and 16 (30%) were not. Typically, girls with legal immi-
grant status had entered the USA on visas that promoted family reunification;
these visas were based on the presence in the USA of immediate relatives who

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were either American citizens or permanent legal residents. One Indian girl’s
family legally migrated after obtaining a diversity visa (i.e. a form of visa granted
to people emigrating from under-represented sending nations). The experiences
of three girls who arrived as legal refugees as defined by the US State Depart-
ment are not included in this article. The girls with undocumented statuses
came to the USA with time-limited tourist visas and overstayed, thereby crossing
the line into ‘non’ status or illegality. Parents or relatives of five of these girls
were actively working to adjust the girls’ immigration status.

Analyzing the Data

Analyzing the transcripts/interview notes revealed themes about identity, race
and racism, gender roles, the girls’ relationships with their families, the unit and
process of migration, and realized and unrealized expectations about coming to
the USA. Using each of these developing themes as a focus of inquiry, I re-
analyzed data to identify possible patterns or clusters of similarity (Bauer and
Thompson, 2004: 348). I also used my field notes to define the setting of the
girls’ experiences, i.e. neighborhood diversity, private homes, high risers or stores.
Migration and family relationships, however, remained the focal points for my
analysis.

FINDINGS AND PATTERNS

I found as adolescents, many girls had not been part of their families’ decisions
to emigrate. Some learned that they would be leaving only after the decision
had been made by their parent(s), grandparent(s) or other relative(s); and/or
after visa applications had been filed. For example, three girls emigrating from
the Caribbean learned of the decision only three days before they left their
island homes. For most of the girls, though, the possibility of migration had
permeated their families’ consciousness for months if not years before their
departures. Many of the Caribbean girls had mothers or other relatives in the
USA and, therefore, expected they would one day go to America also. Girls
from the former Soviet Union spoke of anxiously waiting for state clearance,
and months of uncertainty as to where they would go – would it be the USA,
Israel or somewhere else? Several South Asian girls reported that their families
had played the US immigration diversity lottery system for years, always with
the hope that someday they ‘would get lucky’.

The girls expressed a mixture of emotions: ambivalence, confusion, pride,

optimism, anxiety, dread, sadness and excitement. Many girls spoke about their
parents’ explanations for their migration including family reunification, better
jobs, access to higher education, and living without the fear of violence (e.g.
as violence had been present in Kosovo, Haiti and the West Bank). Often, the
girls agreed with these reasons for migration. However, later looking back

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though the lens of their post-migration experiences including US racism,
parents’ loss of professional status and crowded living conditions, some girls
questioned the ‘wisdom’ of their families’ decision to emigrate given the sacri-
fices this had entailed. Several documented and undocumented girls from the
Caribbean and Latin America, and one girl from Korea, considered their stay
in the USA as temporary – the means to gain an ‘American’ education that
would improve their status when they returned to their own countries. Two
undocumented sisters from Kosovo, and one girl from Haiti, declared that the
USA was only a temporary refuge from civil strife back home. They would
leave as soon as the ‘war’ ended.

Even with varying socio-economic characteristics and ethnic-national

cultures, the process of a girl and her family’s migration appeared to be signifi-
cant factor influencing the girls’ post-migration experiences. Patterns emerged
from the data both in terms of the different migration processes and in the
kinds of family relationships that developed post-migration. In the first case –
patterns of migration – the four principal types reported were migrations that
involved intact two parent families; father-first and reunification of family units;
father-first and new family constellations; and, mother-first and the establish-
ment of maternal family units. Mother-first and establishment of new family
constellations was also common. Other less common migration patterns entailed
parents-first and reconstituted family unit migrations; migrations to join siblings
or a grandparent, migrations to join an aunt and/or uncle and finally
migrations alone. Since most girls’ migrations involved a primary family unit, I
detail only the four principal patterns identified.

Intact Two Parent Family Migration

Two parent intact family migration refers here to a family unit – parents and
child(ren) – that lived together prior to their migration and then traveled
together to the USA. In this study, 22 (36%) girls migrated in this way, most
with valid immigration visas. The majority of these girls came from the former
Soviet Union, Bangladesh and India. Several came from Haiti, Ecuador, China,
and Korea.

Father-first Migration and Family Reunification

Ten girls (16%), including those from China, Korea, Ghana, the Philippines, the
West Bank, Egypt, and former Yugoslavia, experienced father-first migration.
Typical of late 19th- and early 20th-century migration when men dominated
as the family’s initial migrant, the fathers of these girls had left behind their
wives and children to ‘set up things’ in the USA (Dreby, 2006: 33). When the
father sent for the family or the girl’s mother was ‘ready’ to join him, they also
migrated. Fatima’s migration illustrates this pattern.

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Fatima was six when her father left Jerusalem and migrated to the USA. While
the rest of the family had immigration visas, Fatima’s mother was not ready to
leave her home in old Jerusalem. Fatima pleaded to join her father in America:
‘paradise’. However, it was not until Fatima was 13 and Arab-Israeli tensions once
again became particularly violent, that her mother decided ‘from one day to the
next’ to emigrate with the children and reestablish their family household in
New York.

Father- first and New Family Constellation

A second pattern of father-first migration involved separated, divorced or
widowed fathers who migrated alone to the USA, leaving their daughters to
be raised by their mothers and/or other relatives. Often years later, these father
facilitated their adolescent daughters’ migration from the Dominican Republic,
Egypt, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, and Mexico. Three girls joined only their fathers,
and three girls joined their fathers, new stepmother and step or half siblings.

Mother-first Migration

Mother-first migration was experienced by a total of 16 girls (25%) who came
from Barbados, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Haiti,
Jamaica, Latvia and Trinidad. Most of these girls’ mothers had migrated for
purposes of employment. Migrating without one’s children increased a woman’s
job options in terms of evening and weekend work and/or live-in employ-
ment; it may have also eliminated stresses related to childcare during the adjust-
ment period. Many mothers from the Caribbean came to work as childcare
workers, housekeepers or nursing assistants, often sending remittances home to
their daughters’ caregiver (e.g. fathers, grandparents, godparents, aunts and/or
family friends). Following migration, most mother-first families consisted of the
mother and the adolescent and often, in addition, other siblings and/or grand-
parents. A few mother-first families also included half-siblings and the mother’s
new husband or partner. The following narratives provide two examples of
mother-first migrations:

Mila’s mother left Latvia, her daughter and husband, to pursue a career as a
fashion designer in the West.‘Legally’ in the US on the basis of a paper marriage,
she brought her teen-age daughter to live with her. Her husband, who believed
his wife and daughter had entered as refugees, remained in Latvia where he
‘preferred to be a rich man in a poor country, rather than a poor man in a rich
country’.

After Carmen’s biological mother left her as an infant, her father and step mother
raised her. However, at age six Carmen’s father and stepmother separated. Her
stepmother then migrated alone to the United States to find work, ‘. . . there
was a good economic situation and my Mom, she wanted to give us what we
needed . . .’ Carmen joined her stepmother at age 12.

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Multiple factors interacted to shape the girls’ post-migration family

experiences, among them the girls’ age at migration; pre-migration household
composition and family life including family relationships and gender role
expectations, socio-economic status; and whether the girls had family and/or
other support systems in the USA. Nevertheless, most striking was the emerg-
ence from the interviews of three more or less distinct post-migration family
life ‘experiences’, which interconnected with the patterns of the girls’
migration experiences: pulling together, contested gender and role expectations
and significant intergenerational conflicts.

‘Pulling together’ refers here to a family developing and/or maintaining

strategies to mutually cope with the challenges of their new environment. Inter-
dependence and flexibility were seen repeatedly in the stories of girls who
experienced this post-migration pattern. ‘Contested gender and role expec-
tations’ refers to conflicts experienced in some families around gender roles. In
these families, parents – particularly fathers – wanted their daughters to subscribe
to more traditional cultural proscriptions about behavior including not social-
izing with the opposite sex, not dating, arranged marriages, and/or not working
outside the home. ‘Significant intergenerational conflicts’ refers to families
within which extremely poor communication took place between parents and
daughters, and where there was limited or no ability to resolve differences. Such
conflicts often involved parental demands for passive obedience to parental
authority, as well as resonating anger about prior ‘abandonment’ and/or unmet
expectations.

As discussed later, pulling together was most often experienced by girls

who had migrated with both parents. Contested gender and role expectations
characterized a few families who migrated together but more often the experi-
ences of girls who migrated with one parent to join another. Significant inter-
generational conflicts most frequently surfaced among girls who had been
separated for many years from a parent (father or mother) and migrated during
adolescence to join this parent.

Family Collectivism: Pulling Together

The majority of girls who migrated with their parents described good to
excellent post-migration family relationships and even enhanced closeness.
Migration had ‘ignited the full play of family collectivism, strengthening family
relationship . . . revitalizing them’ (Zhang, 1994: 4). In talking about their pre-
migration lives, some girls shared that they had frequently fought with their
siblings. Some had lived gender segregated lives. Now, post migration, the girls’
brothers and/or sisters were their ‘best friends’, supporting and helping them to
navigate new schools and neighborhoods.

In these families, post-migration gender roles and expectations generally

mirrored pre-migration traditions. But shifts also occurred in the allocation of

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roles and functions. For example, prior to migration, many girls’ mothers had
not worked outside the home; after arriving in the USA, though, they sought
and found employment. In response, the girls took on activities that in their
home countries had been performed by their mothers, grandmothers and/or
servants. Girls from South Asia, Korea, China and India reported the most
dramatic post-migration changes in household functions and roles. Most experi-
enced their parents working long hours, and often the long hours they put in
as well, as being necessary for the family’s future overall. Thus, they accepted
their new responsibilities as the following example indicates:

Meena, age 17, did ‘what was needed.’ In India she had lived in a family
compound with servants. Now she shared a pullout couch with her sister and
was responsible for cooking and housework. Nevertheless, with her mother
working days and studying nights to become a dental technician, Meena felt
proud contributing to her family’s well-being.

Still, many of the girls who migrated with their families also expressed

frustration and unhappiness about reduced time as a family as a result of work
and/or school schedules. Several girls recounted strategies their families had
created to counter scheduling challenges. For example, a few families ate dinner
only at 10 pm when a parent arrived home from work, or ate breakfast at
6 am before everyone left for the day. Despite their frustration with the changes
in family time, physical accommodations and/or responsibilities, most of the
girls who migrated with their families consciously chose not to reveal their
unhappiness so not to upset or worry their parents. As Li, an 18-year old girl
from China whose engineer father now worked in a restaurant, observed, my
parents ‘sacrificed in order to give me a better life’. If ‘all this’ means a chance
to achieve a dream, it is ‘worthwhile’.

Nevertheless, a few girls who had migrated with their whole families felt

that the sacrifices of migration were too great to make it ‘worthwhile’. These
girls felt neglected and abandoned by their working parents and were full of
resentment. For example, 16-year old Tracy from Hong Kong observed through
tears:

All changed . . . family spent more time together in Hong Kong, mother didn’t
work there . . . now, have to rely on one self, parents have no time to care for
you, they just care about their work . . . They don’t care about us, if you have
a problem ‘solve by yourself ’ they don’t care, not interested, problem is stupid,
don’t care.

Family Tensions: Contested Gender and Role Expectations

As might be anticipated for a group of adolescents, situational intergenerational
tensions also existed. For some, conflicts around dating were a ‘transitional

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deviation’ within otherwise interdependent and pulling together families. Several
South Asian girls who had migrated with their whole families described their
resistance to parental proscriptions. Yet, they acknowledged that they would
ultimately follow their parents’ wishes for same religion and/or arranged
marriage partners:

Aisha, a Muslim girl from Bangladesh, accepted the practice of an arranged
marriage but wanted to postpone the ‘inevitable’ until after she completed college.
To delay her parents’ match making Aisha cut up all recent photos of herself.
Without photos her relatives in India were unable to search for a suitable husband.
With eyes twinkling, Aisha went on to describe an evening when a suitor had
been brought home by her father. On that night Aisha over-salted the soup and
limped as she walked across the living room floor. A high school senior, 18 year
old Aisha’s strategies had thus far successfully discouraged all potential husbands,
and she was actively making plans to attend college.

In some families where the father had migrated first and mothers parented

alone, the girls’ mothers had become independent decision makers. After being
reunited, some girls’ parents renegotiated their decision-making and more
traditional gender roles, as Hye-Sook’s s family illustrates.

In Korea Hye-Sook’s father had been the sole decision maker. But after his
departure Hye-Sook got used to asking permission only from her mother. Three
years after the family reunited, Hye-Sook still finds it difficult asking her father
for permission. Nevertheless, Hye-Sook has observed more equity in her parents’
relationship and in their decision-making. In fact, Hye-Sook’s now sees her
mother as a role model and wants to emulate her independence.

More frequently, girls who migrated with their mothers to join their

fathers spoke of family tensions between tradition and change subsequent to
family reunification. This was the situation in Marina’s family:

For 13 years in Yugoslavia, Marina’s mother was the head of the family, even on
the brief summer visits of her husband living in New York. Since Marina, her
mother and several siblings’ reunification with her father and an older brother
in New York, there have been significant family tensions. Marina’s mother had
been the primary parent for many years and is now unwilling to relinquish her
role as principal decision-maker. Marina’s unemployed father, formerly silent
about childcare issues, now wants to assert ‘unilateral control’ over the family, re-
introducing more traditional values and gender roles. Marina’s more traditional
older brother sides with her father. But Marina thinks her mother, although more
recently arrived, better understands the lives of teenagers in the US than either
her father or brother. Marina has thus allied with her mother. As a result family
tensions have escalated.

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Marva’s story illustrates the intersection of parent-first migration,

separations and step-parenting:

When Marva was 16 a man appeared at her home in Guyana. With his arrival
she discovered that the father who had raised her was her stepfather and the
strange man from America was her biological father. Marva did not want to
leave her mother but her ‘father’ convinced her that in America she would have
access to a better education. Yet, once in New York with her father, his new
wife and her children, Marva felt ‘re-abandoned’ by her father. Marva felt
ignored, ‘invisible, like a non-person.’ Sixteen years old, she was hurt, angry and
she felt trapped, caught between real educational opportunities in the US and
an uncertain future in Guyana.

Parents and their children often have very different perceptions about

immigration. Parents may be ambivalent about leaving children behind but
perceive that migration and prolonged separations, although difficult, are
necessary to improve the social, educational and economic lives of their children
(Best-Cummings and Gildner, 2004; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 1997; Parrenas,
2001a,b). The children left behind, however, may not understand the ‘rationale’
for an absent parent, particularly their mothers. They may feel forgotten,
unloved, or abandoned. With the establishment of a transnational household,
parenting in some families becomes partially or totally bifurcated. The migrat-
ing mother provides the economic or instrumental function and the caregiver
– the father, grandparent or other relative or friend – provides the immediate
expressive emotional function (Suarez-Orozco et al., 2002).

In this study, less than half of the mothers who migrated before their

daughters had maintained regular contact via phone calls, letters, emails and/or
visits. For most girls, contact with their mothers had been irregular, sporadic or
non-existent. After many years, often more than anticipated, some mothers
adjusted their own initial undocumented status and/or filed immigration papers
to allow their daughters to join them. A number of girls said they only reunited
with their mothers when their caregiver felt too old or in poor health, and/or
no longer wanted responsibility for an adolescent and the ‘trouble’ she might
bring. Many of these girls came on visitor or tourist visas. When their visas
expired, they became undocumented.

A few girls whose mothers had departed years earlier grew up not

knowing if or when they would join their mothers in the USA. Many,
especially those whose mothers had left when they were very young, talked
about how their former caregivers, particularly grandmothers and in one case
an aunt, had been the central nurturing person in their lives. However, a few
girls described how they had felt unloved, ignored or abused in their pre-
migration homes. When asked to describe their connection with their mothers
prior to unification, some described an idealized potential rescuer who would

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do no wrong, e.g. ‘she will someday come back and get me and all will be
okay’; dreams of reunification helped to comfort these girls. Girls who were
older when their mothers left and those with more consistent contact with their
absent mothers – phone calls and visits – spoke of generally positive relation-
ships with their mothers then and now. The girls with more inconsistent contact
described more strained, complex and often ambivalent perceptions. A few girls
described their mothers as malevolent abandoners.

Significant Intergenerational Conflicts

The majority of girls with prolonged separation from their mothers described
current family relationships as ones filled with unmet expectations, disappoint-
ments, confusion, frustration and anger. The girls felt their mothers now wanted,
even demanded, expressions of love, gratitude and/or acknowledgement of their
maternal sacrifices. For some girls, their mother’s expectation of obedience was
the most ‘vexing’ of all.Accusations and counter accusations spiraled, each feeling
betrayed by the other. The girls responded with rage and resistance.

No doubt, personalities contributed to the intensity of the conflict and

rage between Julie and her mother. At the same time, though, mother-first
phased migration and related issues of separation individuation provided the
context for at least some of this family’s issues. Julie was a bright underachiev-
ing high school senior who had come to the USA from Barbados when she
was 15. Julie described the most hostile mother–daughter relationship of all the
girls interviewed. The anger on both sides had escalated into mutual violence
involving the police and child protective services. Julie powerfully summed up
her own experience and that of other girls like herself who had migrated to
join a parent they essentially did not know:

They haven’t been with their kids for so long, they don’t let them know. ‘Okay,
I didn’t mean to do that, I wanted it different,’ whatever, and then when you
actually start living with them, you know, they try to get to know you, they just
jump in to, ‘I’m your mother, you listen to what I say,’ but I say ‘you don’t know
me, you don’t know nothing about me and you don’t try to know nothing about
me, you just come out being my mother after you haven’t been my mother for
years . . . don’t think, you can’t do that, you can’t just come out and be my mother,
because I have a lot of people back home who (sic) I consider my mother.’

While Julie continued to live with her mother, several girls with similarly frac-
tious post-migration relationships no longer did so, having moved in with rela-
tives and/or non-kin caretaker. Two high school-based social workers I met
during the study observed that, among their Caribbean students, it was not
unusual for girls ‘brought here up here’ by their mothers to no longer live with
them. For some, relocation to a relative or friend helped to moderate and
improve the girls’ relationship with their mothers. For others, it did not.

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CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS FOR SOCIAL WORK
RESEARCH AND PRACTICE

One observation that emerges from this study is that, public assumptions and
media images sometimes notwithstanding, many families’ post-migration experi-
ences are positive. In this study of a group of adolescent immigrant girls attend-
ing New York City high school in the 1990s, I found that the majority of the
girls described generally good family relationships after arriving. These positive
relationships existed across the span of the girls’ ages at migration and at the
time of the interviews. Many girls felt their families had drawn closer together,
though this assessment more often applied to girls whose families had migrated
together than those experiencing other forms of family migrations. The flexi-
bility, strength and resiliency depicted by many of these girls even in the face
of stressful and overwhelming situations shows that immigrants and their families
have a multitude of responses to immigration. As many of these responses are
functional if not growth producing (Berger and Weiss, 2002: 22), this research
suggests that it is a mistake to use staged models that assume inevitable patho-
logical outcomes during post-arrival adjustments (Sluzki, 1979).

A second conclusion drawn from this study is that continuities matter. In

order to best understand the girls’ experiences and conflicts, connections need
to be made between adolescents’ pre- and post- migration family relationships.
Indeed, my findings demonstrate patterned intersections between migration
process, adolescent development, and family relationships. On the positive side,
migration with their nuclear families enabled adolescent girls to maintain some
active link with their past and thus a sense of continuity. Continuity also emerged
as a modifying or ‘protective’ factor for many girls who continued to live with
their mothers, and then migrated with their mothers to rejoin their fathers.

On the other hand, girls whose father or mother migrated first often

experienced pre-adolescent losses. For some girls, migration during adolescence
appeared to reactivate these prior losses. Again, they found themselves separated
from a known caregiver and in a new social and cultural landscape where they
were expected to ‘re-attach’ to an unknown caregiver. This presented a signifi-
cant challenge during the adolescent trajectory of separation and individuation.
In addition, girls who migrated to join their fathers and new families experi-
enced both good and bad effects, namely, both the expanded possibilities of
blended families and the classic tensions of stepfamilies.

A third conclusion here is that family tensions are often rooted in specifi-

cally gendered conflicts within and between generations. Many girls portrayed
their fathers as very traditional and uncomfortable with their daughters’ adoption
of ‘American’ behaviors and values. In many of these families, the girls’ mothers
had become, during the time of parental separation, active decision makers and
more flexible in their roles. Thus, not only the girls but also often the girls’

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mothers were involved in conflicts about “proper” gender roles. Significant
conflicts were also described by girls who had experienced prolonged separ-
ations from, and limited contact with, their mothers. In these families, feelings
of loss and abandonment were particularly raw. Further, within these already
fragile parent–adolescent relationships, there seemed to be intensification of the
process of individuation and separation that occurs developmentally in any case
between mothers and daughters during adolescence.

It should be emphasized that, while the girls in this study migrated in

the 1990s, these conclusions remain relevant. For one thing, similar migration
patterns are still being experienced; for another, the literature continues to pay
insufficient attention to the relationship between adolescence and the experi-
ences of migration. Moreover, given visa processing delays since 9/11, family
separations may be even longer than before. This means that a practical policy
ramification of this research is that, now as before, front-line practitioners should
routinely include processes and patterns of migration in their assessments. One
tool that may help in this regard is the Assessment of Immigration Dynamics (AID)
(Altman and Michael, 2007), a conceptual framework that utilizes the strength
perspective (Saleebey, 1996) and provides a series of stimulus questions to focus
mutual exploration by the client and social worker of the process of migration
and how this has affected post-migration family dynamics.

Further among their clients, social workers are likely to find families in

which adolescent daughters’ desires and expectations are at odds with parental
perceptions and traditions. This research also suggests that practitioners need to
engage girls who have experienced prolonged separations from their mothers
and fathers – and who now may well have intense conflict with their parents
– in mutual exploration of initial separations including losses that both gener-
ations may have experienced. In some cases, mothers’ groups can offer a concrete
setting for providing mutual support and sharing strategies to lessen feelings of
sadness and anger. Analogously, group settings may help adolescent girls and
should be encouraged. Organized discussions can help young people express
their feelings about immigration, reaffirming their experiences while finding
ways to resolve conflicts that arise within their families. Schools may be a good
place to organize such groups, allowing for normalization by removing the
stigma of having to go to a mental health clinic.

Social workers also need to pay more attention to the effects of trans-

national child rearing and subsequent reunification. Along with community and
religious leaders, social workers need to promote and lead community-based
parent education programs that focus on child development and strategies to
facilitate reunification. In addition, development of international social work
networks might facilitate improved parent-child communication and support
for transnational families.

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Finally, it should be emphasized that the girls interviewed for this study

were recruited from a non-clinical setting. Their narratives reflect multiple
responses to immigration and help to identify both protective factors and
strategies for successful post-migration adjustments. In order to increase knowl-
edge about the experiences of immigrant adolescents, the majority of who do
not present for services, social work research must include more non-clinic based
populations from different nations of origin.

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Suzanne Michael, a sociologist and social worker, is an independent consult-
ant in New York. Dr Michael’s career has included work as a policy analyst and
program developer in the field of immigrant health, as a clinician with immi-
grant families, and as a professor of social welfare policy. Dr Michael also
developed and directed Adelphi University’s Vital Signs, Measuring Social Health
on Long Island, a collaborative campus-community research project in social
epidemiology. [email: suzmichael@nyc.rr.com]

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